ss one was begging a morsel of food," the toymaker
explained conversationally. "Doubtless her stomach is empty. _Wah! Wah!_
But she has no pice. And a man's food is his own...."

As he spoke a milk-white bull ambled by, plundering at will; his
privileged nose adventuring near and nearer to the savoury smell.
Promptly, with reverential eagerness, the man proffered half a fresh
chupatti to the sacred intruder.

At that the starving girl-mother lunged forward with the yell of a
hunted beast; lunged right across the path of a dapper young man in an
English suit, green turban, and patent-leather shoes.

"Peace, she-devil! Make way," he cried; and catching her wrist--that
looked as if it would snap at a touch--he flung her aside so roughly
that she staggered and fell, the child beneath her emitting a feeble
wail....

Since the days of his imprisonment, cruelty witnessed had a startling
effect on Roy. Between the moment when he sprang from the saddle, in a
blaze of fury, to the moment when he stood confronting the suave,
Anglicised Indian--riding-crop in one hand, the other supporting the
girl and her babe--his mind was a blank. The thing was done almost
before the impulse reached his brain. He wondered if he had struck the
fellow, whom he was now arraigning furiously in fluent Hindustani, and
whose sullen, shifty face was reminding him of some one--somewhere....

"Have you _no_ respect for suffering--or for women other than your own?"
he demanded, scorn undisguised in his look and tone.

The man's answering shrug was frankly contemptuous. "All you English are
mad," he said in the vernacular. "If she die not to-day, she will die
to-morrow. And already there are too many to feed--"

"She will not die to-day or to-morrow," Roy retorted with Olympian
assurance. "Courage, little mother,"--he addressed the girl--"you shall
have food, you and the sonling."

As she raised herself, clutching at his arm, he became uncomfortably
aware that her rags of clothing were probably verminous; that his
chivalrous pity was tinged with repulsion. But pity prevailed.
Supporting her to a neighbouring stall, he bought fruit, which she
devoured like a wild thing. He begged a little milk in a lotah and gave
her money for more. Half dazed, she dropped the money, emptied the small
jar almost at a gulp, and flung herself at his feet, pressing her
forehead on his dusty boot; covering him with confusion. Imperatively he
bade her get up. No result.